Friday, September 25, 2015

Lesson #218: You Don’t Know, What You Don’t Know

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A person’s knowledge base is entirely dependent on their
personal life experiences. What did they
study in school? What did they learn in
their jobs? Who are they networked
with? What challenges have they had to
solve? etc. In your business decision making, you are
typically tapping into those past experiences to help guide you. And, when you don’t know the answer to something
you know you need, you are typically smart enough to do a little digging, ask
the right questions and track it down.
But, there are two problems with this.

Firstly, notice I said “something you know you need”. Unfortunately, in most scenarios, there is a
wide range of other answers you need, but you just didn’t know it, because your
life’s experiences haven’t yet brought them to your attention. And, secondly, even if you asked the right,
all-encompassing questions upfront, people are typically task-oriented, and
once they have “checked the box” (in terms of answering those questions), they
typically move on to the next task and never revisit those same questions down
the road. Which in today’s rapidly
evolving world, can be a huge mistake.

The points here are, you are never stopping learning, and
your quest for information should be part of your everyday process . . . not
just checking off tasks from your list.
This includes revisiting key questions you have asked in your past, to
see if anything is different, today, that can materially impact your business. And, surrounding yourself by new people who
may have something valuable to contribute to the discussion around your
business. This could simply be more networking
in your local business community, or finding
mentors for your business, preferably with people who have a far broader
base of experience than your own.

Let me give a couple real life examples. I was working with one client that was in the
marketing technology space. They had
built a world class solution around one vertical of marketing several years
earlier. But, that was a different time,
when enterprise brands were organizing their marketing departments around
specific marketing verticals (e.g., digital, stores, catalog). Today, only a few years later, those same
companies are employing omni-channel marketing strategies, breaking down the
marketing silos. So, the company’s
product today, although good for its vertical, needs to be completely rethought
as it how it fits within designing
an omni-channel marketing strategy, seamlessly sharing consumer data
between the other verticals.

To further compound matters, this same client had built the
core features of their business years earlier.
And, although they were cutting edge at the time, in a space with few
competitors, today the market was ripe with new competitors that were nipping
at their heels, with solutions that better than my client’s solutions and
taking market share away. The flaw in my
client’s logic was the material investment in the product was behind them, and
they could move those product investment budgets into other areas of the
company. When the reality is, product
development is a never-ending process where the product needs to continue to
innovate, each and every year, or it will die.

And, if that wasn’t enough, my client’s customers were
shifting what they really wanted out of solutions in this marketing
vertical. It was less about the features
and functionality, and more about helping their customers make better data-driven
business decisions. And, this client had
nothing to offer its customers in this regard, and needed to quickly catch up.

So, for all you startup CEOs out there, your learning is
never done, and your innovation is never over.
Surround yourself by smart people who know a lot more than you do, take
off your historical blinders, replace them with a perpetual thirst for new
knowledge and start with fresh thinking about your business each and every
year. The key word being THINKING, about
what don’t you know about your business that you should.

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